Page:The Seven Seas (Kipling, 1896).djvu/111

Rh An' by the terms of the Contract, as I have read the same,

If He got me to port alive I would exalt His Name,

An' praise His Holy Majesty till further orders came.

He saved me from the cattle an' He saved me from the sea,

For they found me 'tween two drownded ones where the roll had landed me —

An' a four-inch crack on top of my head, as crazy as could be.

But that were done by a stanchion, an' not by a bullock at all,

An' I lay still for seven weeks convalessing of the fall,

An' readin' the shiny Scripture texts in the Seaman's Hospital.

An' I spoke to God of our Contract, an' He says to my prayer:

'I never puts on My ministers no more than they can bear.

'So back you go to the cattle-boats an' preach My Gospel there.